The Chinaman

'One of best five mystery novels of 2008. The Bitter Lemon Press has been doing serious mystery readers in America a service by translating and reprinting the work of Friedrich Glauser, who was born in Vienna in 1896 and died at the age of 42. Glauser spent much of his adult life in psychiatric wards and prisons, but he somehow managed to write a hypnotic series of crime novels featuring a Swiss policeman named Sergeant Studer. (In recognition of Glauser's achievement, Germany has dubbed its most prestigious crime fiction award the Glauser Prize.). This year, Bitter Lemon brought out the fourth Studer adventure, The Chinaman, which was first published in 1939. The murky and absolutely compelling plot has something to do with a happenstance meeting between Studer and a stranger at a glum Swiss inn. Months later, the stranger's corpse is found lying on the fresh grave of a woman who also turns out to be a murder victim. Maybe it's the portentous original publication date - 1939 - that makes readers pay attention to the suspicion of the Swiss villagers, the coarseness of the apartment dwellers in a Bern tenement, the edginess everywhere. (In January, Bitter Lemon will bring out another Studer classic, The Spoke.)'